Chapter 12: Problems of Mentoring Programmes and Relationships

Overview

Although mentoring is a powerful human resource development tool, it is only one of many in the corporate toolbox. Badly handled, it can turn into a spanner in the works. Even well handled, it is not appropriate in all circumstances, nor is it necessarily superior to other forms of management development. Rather, it is a process to be used alongside other, more traditional forms of career progression. Many companies that have been running mentoring programmes during the past decade now encourage managers to have as many developmental relationships of different kinds as possible.

Katherine Kram (1983) puts the negative side of a wholehearted corporate commitment to mentoring:

The concept has become too aggrandized. Mentoring can sometimes be limited in value or even destructive in a company.

Career development staff should remember that other relationships, for example with peers, can be just as rewarding and fruitful as mentoring relationships.

(Note the assumption that peers do not mentor each other!)

Some companies have found that the main problem is the unfamiliarity of mentoring in the business environment. Other critics say that true mentor-mentee relationships are rare and should not develop at gunpoint. Michael Zey in his book The Mentor Connection feels that trying to formalise ‘what is at best a random occurrence' can prove disastrous if management does not stand by the newly joined couples.

Some formal mentoring is seen as a quick fix for companies who should really be looking at changing their whole culture. Reba Keele, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Brigham Young University, Utah, feels that formal mentoring, like arranged marriages, works better in Far Eastern cultures than in Western. In Japan especially, she points out, the traditional respect for age and experience provides a framework that most people can accept:

In the Japanese organization, the senior member of management has already accepted the fact that he is not going to become the next president. Assuming the responsibility of mentoring is considered an honor and recognition of your status. Whereas in our organizations, issues that have to do with human resource development are not considered primary functions.

Organisations should monitor the programme carefully so that they can identify and solve problems swiftly. Most difficulties can easily be resolved if they are recognised early and brought out into the open. Clear lines of communication between mentors, mentees and programme co-ordinators can ensure that dissatisfactions with the relationship will result in immediate action.

We can divide the most common pitfalls into those that concern the programme and those that concern the individual mentoring relationship.